


It's Okay

by LizzyDizzyYo



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Angst, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 23:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyDizzyYo/pseuds/LizzyDizzyYo
Summary: At best, Phil just ignores him. At worst, Phil is tempted to be an axe murderer just for his special bow-down-before-your-mighty-lord-you-lowly-peasants mannered neighbor, but Phil is a nice person so he’s never acted out on it. One day, though, he’s proven that there’s more to his neighbor than meets the ice-cold and totally not dazzling honey-colored eyes.For quite some time, the boy doesn’t look up so Phil thinks he’s going to be ignored. That’s fine. He’s used to it. He stands up and turns around to go to his own apartment.“I don’t know what to do.”Phil stops walking and turns around again. The boy has looked up, though not at him, and is wiping the tears away from his cheeks.“It’s just, I think… I think the world hates me or something.”(From thisprompt.)





	It's Okay

**Author's Note:**

> As a way to celebrate this fic's (almost) second birthday, I decided to upload it here on AO3, although I did post it on [ tumblr](http://lizzydizzyyo.tumblr.com/post/116863455577/its-okay) first. So, this is more like a throwback. I was a lot shittier at writing back then (I still am, but a lot less so), so if it's bad, just... just be patient, okay?
> 
> This fic was betaed by [ phanficsandbullshit](http://phanficsandbullshit.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> (Also, in case you enjoy original works, you can check out my more current and ongoing omegaverse-but-not-really story, [ Not Exactly My Type](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9560357/chapters/21615968).)

“For God’s sake!”

Oh, it’s his neighbor again.

 _I wonder what is it this time,_ Phil muses, keeping his eyes glued to his MacBook’s screen and happily munching on his homemade popcorn. His eyes dart for a split second to the _1:02 AM_ at the top right corner of his screen before going back to middle. The giant cuddly rabbit-like Totoro and the little girl are infinitely more intriguing to him than his stony arsehole of a neighbor anyway.

“Oh my God, just fucking open please!”

Then Phil hears the rattling of something small and metal, probably keys, and a pounding. Thank God for the rather pricey apartment, because now it provides a decent sound-proofing that makes the pounding significantly muffled. It is still heard though, so it must be one hell of a door hitting that his neighbor was doing. Phil sighs.

The thing is, Phil doesn’t have anything against his neighbor that he hasn’t caught the name of. He’s quiet and non-disturbing, always minding his own business and never being obnoxious. He keeps his distance as to not invade anyone’s personal space, including his other neighbors other than Phil. He really is the perfect neighbor anyone living in the city could ever ask for. Except for when he is not.

Like when there was the sudden sound of crashing dishes, for example. Or when he heard some pounding or hitting sound to the wall, like now. Or maybe when he heard some unintelligible yelling in the middle of the night for no clear reason. On top of that, if looks could kill, he would probably be dead long time ago, when he first caught his neighbor in the hallway because Phil can’t remember seeing a more venomous and bloodcurdlingly cold look than that of his neighbor just then. It’s like he passionately hates the world with his entire being or something. Which doesn’t make sense.

Phil believes in the saying that there are always many sides to a story, but as far as he can see, his neighbor lives a good life. He is well off, that much he knows. This apartment building may not be filled with million-pound priced units, but the people who live here are mostly in the upper middle class category because the rent is quite high.

Phil himself is quite lucky to be working a decent paying job in BBC as a producer of a weekend radio show at the young age of 25. The young woman named Evelyn who lives in the unit on his right is an accountant at a massive international company’s branch in central London. Rob, a guy in his late twenties who lives across from him, is a manager of a pretty well-known computing company. His unnamed neighbor still looks about twenty, if not under, so he must be a kid from an at least middle class, if not quite wealthy family. Another reason to believe he has it rather easy in life because he doesn’t seem to work.

Phil also has to admit, albeit a little begrudgingly, that his neighbor is rather attractive. With soft dark brown hair, warm honey-colored eyes (when he’s not busy sending death stares, of course), and a pair of sharp and high cheekbones, he is easily one of the most handsome guys Phil has ever seen. He is tall, around an inch or two taller than Phil’s own 6’1”, and slim without being lanky, so Phil is sure he wouldn’t have any trouble making girls (or guys, whatever floats his boat) fall at his feet. So why is he adamant about being angry and bitter towards the universe, then?

“Fuck you, you dipshit–”

_Thump._

“–motherfucking useless–”

_Thump._

“–asswad scumface–”

_Thump._

“–sorry fucking excuse–”

_Thump._

“–of a shitty ass cocksucking–”

_Thump._

“–fucking twat door!”

_Thump._

Wow.

Phil has never known it’s possible to create a swear phrase that long. He waits for a while, straining his ear to hear if there will be another string of curses thrown haphazardly at some innocent inanimate objects. He has to admit, after being the receiving end of many silently hostile treatments, it’s amusing to witness his neighbor getting rattled and pissed off. It’s like the world is nodding at him by letting him watch karma works its magic.

He’s not mean, okay? At least he doesn’t make his amusement apparent like Rob and Evelyn do sometimes.

It turns out that there is no more cursing outside. Whatever it is that his neighbor is mad at, it must have been solved already. Good. There is only so much joy that Phil can get from his neighbor’s too often inexplicable irritations before it turns into annoyance. Phil decides to plug in the jack of his earphones to his laptop and put the buds on before his neighbor changes his mind. But then, he hears really faint, almost unheard, something that resembles _sniffling_ from outside just before the left earbud is properly put on.

That’s a first. He has witnessed all kind of fury and brooding manifestations from his neighbor, but not crying. Granted, he hasn’t heard a crying yet, but sniffling is pretty damn close. What on earth is going on?

Phil then hears something that vaguely sounds like _“Please not now, please, please,”_ accompanied by weak rattling of the keys again. Okay, that guy is one cold son of a bitch, but Phil isn’t. Phil is nice, too nice that he hates himself for it sometimes, so he stands up and walks towards his front door. He turns the key of his apartment and opens the door with uncertainty. His neighbor had better not make him regret this.

The sight that welcomes him when he sticks his head out of the door frame is almost too pitiful to watch. His stomach churns at it, so he decides to walk towards the bundle of mess sitting against the door next to his own, face covered by knees that are hugged tightly by long and graceful hands. The whole body shakes occasionally from the quiet sobs that the guy lets out. There is a backpack next to him, still slung partially on one shoulder. Phil approaches him and crouches down at a safe distance, not too far or too close for his and hopefully the guy’s comfort.

Phil doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t even know what the problem is so he has no hope of consoling his neighbor. He observes the boy (Phil decides his neighbor looks young enough to be called boy) for a while before mustering up the courage to say, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

For quite some time, the boy doesn’t look up so Phil thinks he’s going to be ignored. That’s fine. He’s used to it. He stands up and turns around to go to his own apartment.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Phil stops walking and turns around again. The boy has looked up, though not at him, and is wiping the tears away from his cheeks as he stares blankly into the wall opposite him.

“It’s just, I think… I think the world hates me or something.”

_Yeah, what a surprise, huh? Wonder why that is._

Rather than voicing his sarcasm, Phil decides to sit cross-legged near the boy, although he does it warily. You never know with his neighbor. He can suddenly turn vicious again like he does all the time.

“What’s wrong? Do you, um, need help or something?” Phil asks, eyes secretly darting around to find out what seems to be bothering the person in front of him. His eyes land of the keyhole of the door. Then he looks at the boy’s hand that’s clutching some keys. Oh.

“You can’t open it, can you?”

The boy gives an almost unnoticeable nod, eyes still vacant and very, very tired-looking while staring straight ahead. There are dark circles around his eyes and bags under them big enough to probably carry Phil’s entire DVDs collection.

“Well, um, do you, you know, want me to try that for you?”

His neighbor’s red rimmed eyes finally move to look at him, seeming to scan him from head to toe. Phil suddenly feels naked, being scrutinized like that. His neighbor just ends up stretching his key-clutching hand out to Phil and opening his palm.

Phil takes the bundle of metals and stands up, facing his neighboring apartment door. He looks for the key with the matching number as the door, 241, embedded to it. When he finds it, he takes the key, letting the rest dangle below it, then pushes it to the keyhole on the door. It’s not working.

He keeps trying to push it in, sometimes gently and other times a bit forcefully, despite the key’s adamancy to not being jammed in. It’s partly because he genuinely feels bad for his exhausted neighbor and partly because his pride won’t let him fail. He does it again and again until he hears another sob broken from below him.

_Oh, shit._

“Hey, hey, relax, we can call the locksmith and get it fixed really quick. It’s fine!”

“But I can’t bloody wait!”

_All right. Phone. Where’s my phone?_

“I’m sure it won’t be that–”

“It’s in the middle of the fucking night! He’s sleeping and won’t get here fast–”

_There you go! Now, contacts, contacts, where’s the contacts menu?_

“I’ll tell him to come here fast,” Phil tries to assure him.

“–and my textbooks are all inside, I’m having the test in seven bloody hours–”

_Okay, contacts. Then Lewis. Locksmith Lewis. Where are the L contacts, goddamit!_

“Look, I’m calling him, okay?” He tries again, hoping his neighbor will listen this time.

“–and my professor is a fucking dickhead who gives really fucking difficult tests, and–”

_Lewis, you better pick it up fast. Come on, pick up pick up pick up._

“I promise it’s gonna be fixed in no–”

“–oh my god, I just really want to get in and lie down for a fucking second, I really can’t–”

Then from that point, it’s just a messy string of chokes and partly quieted wailings and nothing decipherable. It’s honestly breaking Phil’s heart, despite him always getting the cold shoulder on good days and much worse on bad days, because the boy in front of him just looks so done and tired of the world’s unrelenting shits. Phil understands finals can be brutal sometimes, though his last ones were just fading memories from two years ago, but God, does the other look so defeated and battered. Suddenly, the quote _“He looks so young and so old at the same time,”_ seems very fitting in this case.

Maybe he’s one of those stereotypically rich kids whose parents are so demanding and controlling, never letting him be himself and always wanting him to be perfect in daily life and ‘presentable’ at their social functions so that they can set him up with another rich couple’s daughter to form strong business or political alliance. That’s why he’s so bitter and angry all the time, and now he’s reached his breaking point from all the pressure and pretenses. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Only it sounds really cliché. Like absolutely, completely, and utterly _really, really_ soap-opera cliché, but he figures that soap operas take after real life events sometimes.

Phil is roughly pulled out of his musing when hears a loud _“What the fuck, Lester? It’s one fucking thirty at night,”_ right in his ear. He straightens up and focuses on his phone quickly.

“Hello, Lewis? Yeah, sorry, but my neighbor is locked out of his flat.”

 _“What in the heaven has that gotta do with me?”_ the other end of the line says in somewhat Scottish accent. Phil holds his phone with his shoulder and his ear then proceeds to try opening the door again. Yep, still not working.

“Can you come and open it please? He has a really important exam in the morning.” Phil replies, holding the phone with his hand again and looking at his very still neighbor below him. He scowls deeply when he hears, _“Well, I don’t give a shit. Bash the door or something.”_ This is not the time for having a picky and lazy-arse locksmith.

“Are you kidding me? Hell no, Lewis. This is serious.” Phil thanks all the deities above for the boy has stopped crying. The brunette has put his head against the door with his eyes closed, his skin dangerously pale. _“I’m serious too, Lester. I’m not going out now.”_ Phil hears again.

“Mate, this is your job. You signed up for this.”

_“I didn’t bloody sign up for being woken up at this time, you little shit.”_

“Do you think this kid signed up for a broken door right before his exam?”

Phil ends up having to spend around five minutes convincing his apartment floor’s regular locksmith and threatening to keep ringing his phone before he gets a grumbling _“You better make him fucking pays me good money for this,”_ and a rather unconvincing promise to come within 20 minutes. It’s still better than nothing.

After clicking ‘end call’ button, he lowers himself into sitting on one heel and contemplates what he should do next. He probably needs to get this kid somewhere comfortable to wait and at least some water to drink, so he gently touches his neighbor’s shoulder before talking.

“You should stay at my place until he comes here and fixes this.”

His neighbor just opens his eyes and looks at him.

“Come on. It’s cold out here.”

“My whole life is like that anyway.”

Phil probably shouldn’t laugh at that, seeing as the kid most likely doesn’t mean it as a joke. He can’t stop a giggle from escaping though, so he quickly clears his throat to hide it.

“Well, my flat’s heater is on and I can get some blanket for you.” He coaxes him again, hoping the other isn’t that offended by him laughing earlier.

“Okay.”

For some reason, Phil is really glad to hear that really small and weak reply. He thinks it has something to do with his excessive altruism, or maybe the really nice face that for once isn’t Hitler-ish and cold looking.

Phil loosely put his arms around the other’s shoulder when he’s pushing himself up. He’s worried that his neighbor might suddenly topple down or something because he looks so wobbly and unstable. He then slowly leads him to his own apartment and gently pushes him down onto the sofa. His MacBook, still opened on the coffee table, is on with _My Neighbor Totoro_ paused mid-film on the screen.

When Phil stands up again to go into his kitchen, his neighbor has sunken deep into the sofa and his eyes are already closed again. It hasn’t even been five seconds since he sat.

“Hey, um…” Phil says, suddenly aware that he has no idea who his neighbor actually is.

“Dan.”

Phil finds it is extremely weird to suddenly know that his nicknames for his neighbor are all incorrect. He knows he shouldn’t be surprised since most of the time he, Evelyn, Rob, and others on his floor just dub him as Evil Elsa or His Highness (sarcastically, of course), or simply ‘the brat’ when they are talking about him. On good days when they’re not feeling pissed off with him, they just call him ‘the kid’ or ‘our neighbor’ (which are hardly ever used by people outside Phil himself, naturally, because they always seem to be irritated with him). It feels strange knowing him as something else, especially something as ordinary and friendly-sounding as “Dan”.

“Uh, Dan, do you want tea? Or coffee, maybe?”

“Whatever you make is fine.”

And as if knowing his name isn’t shocking enough, Dan (he should get used to that name) _smiles._ Granted, it’s a really small, brief, and tired smile, but it’s his unreasonably and forever bitchy neighbor that he’s talking about. He just doesn’t _smile._ And good Lord, he is really fucking adorable when he smiles. Phil can even see slight dips on his cheeks with the left one being more prominent. He has _fucking dimples. What the fuck._

After that, Phil makes good on his promise to bring some blankets, having finished putting some water into his electric kettle to boil for a cup of tea. He brings the thickly folded fabric to Dan, who has begun dozing off and waking up repeatedly. He blinks a lot and flutters his eyes shut before opening them wide every once in a while. Phil suddenly thinks it’s probably a better idea if he makes coffee instead.

“Do you want sugar or cream for your coffee, Dan?”

“Just three sugars and a bit of cream, please.”

Wow. Where the hell has that politeness been all this time?

“Oh, okay.”

Phil decides not to think about it too much. He walks back to the kitchen and starts the coffee machine, putting the right amount of coffee and water to brew. While waiting for the machine to finish, he drums his fingers on the kitchen counter and throws some discreet glances towards the sofa in his living room. He doesn’t know why he is even trying to be discreet, though, since Dan seems to be too tired to care and is probably dead to the world.

When the machine is done, he quickly works on making the coffee as Dan requested and makes his own tea, a chamomile one. He hesitates when he sees there’s still enough water on the kettle to make another cup of tea. In the end, he just decides to go with it. His neighbor is being really nice and polite right now. There’s nothing wrong with returning the favor. Maybe he needs some calming drink.

He makes two trips from the kitchen to the sofa; the first one to bring Dan’s coffee and tea, the last one to bring his own tea. He notices that Dan’s hands are shaking when he’s cradling his coffee mug. He must be extremely honest-to-god knackered then.

“You can drink the tea too, if you like.” Phil says, desperate for the awkward silence to be gone. He hasn’t really thought about this when he invited his once rude neighbor.

_Once. Right. What if he becomes rude and hostile again after this?_

“Uh, yeah. Thanks. But I need to be awake. Studying, you know, and the test.”

Well, at least right now he’s not back to his old self yet.

“What are you studying?”

There are some sipping sounds alongside the blanketing silence.

“Law.”

“Oh. Where?”

Another silence. Phil hopes Lewis isn’t lying about coming here in twenty minutes.

“King’s College.”

Ah. Smart kid, then.

“How, um, old are you?”

“Twenty one. Third year.”

Oh. Not a kid, or a boy, actually.

“I’m 25. BBC radio 1 producer.”

“Cool.”

Phil itches for something to fill the silence. It’s just so _painfully_ awkward right now. He looks at the time on his laptop screen. It’s already been 15 minutes since he called Lewis. Where is that man?

“I, um, am sorry. For disturbing.” Dan suddenly says. Phil perks up a little at that. “It’s just, it’s happening all at once. I can’t really handle it, I guess.”

“If you don’t mind, what happens? I mean, finals can be stressful, but your front door fiasco seems a little bit, you know, kind of, um…”

Dan is intensely watching him, as intensely as he can be with his seemingly 5% charged body.

“…over the top?” Phil continues. He wants to smack himself when it’s out of his mouth because he swears it sounds better in his head. His thought is erased as quickly as it came when he hears a chuckle. Phil regards himself as a pretty decent person reader, so he knows when a gesture is genuine or sarcastic. To him, the chuckle sounds like a bitter one.

“My boyfriend, well more like ex, cheated on me. Says I’m too much of a wimp for him. Because apparently prioritizing education and my theater acting passion are wimpy compared to getting stoned or fucking like rabbit with him all the time.

“I mean, I should have known it was coming. I should have been happy it ended. I am, believe me. It’s just, even when he ended it, it’s in such a disrespectful way. Like I haven’t been treated like that enough this whole time. All these 6 months.

“He’s, I don’t know, suffocating when he’s with me. Patronizing when my choices are different from what he’d like me to choose instead. It’s tiring. And then there’s the law and uni and assignments all the time.

“I know that I chose it myself, and I like arguments. I like debating and talking about issues and having discussions about really pretentious stuff like that. But sometimes it’s just too stiff and pretentious and it’s too much.

“Then my parents. They’re not really, like, strict about my educations and grades and stuff. They’re supportive but they still like to push me to be on top every once in a while, and it hurts sometimes to see their disappointed face when I didn’t achieve as high as they expected.

“I don’t know. I just need the world to slow down a little bit. Just for a day or two. But then again, what am I in the grand scheme of things? The universe probably doesn’t give a shit if I have some existential crisis and drama in my life. It just moves on like it always does.”

Phil is sure that nobody has ever spilled so much to him in one night, and neither has he to another person. Not even his best friend in uni has ever shared that much with him before, and he himself hasn’t either. It’s incredible what being awake at near 2 AM and exhausted can do to you.

“Shit! Oh shit! Sorry, oh my god! I’m gonna go. Thanks for the coffee. I’m leaving. Bye.” Dan suddenly scrambles around and gets up so quickly Phil thinks there’s some steel spring attached to his feet. Phil’s hand shoots up to wrap around Dan’s wrist before he can think about it.

They just stare at each other for a while. Phil notices that Dan’s eyes looks terrified and mortified, and there’s some red tint dusting his cheeks too.

“No, it’s fine. Stay.” He finally says. Dan looks unsure, but he lowers himself slowly to sofa again anyway.

“Sorry for spewing shits like that. And, uh, telling you, I, um, date guys. You’re, I mean, you’re okay with bi, right?” Dan nervously babbles.

Surprising both of them, Phil laughs. “Of course, yeah. I’m bi too, you know.”

“Oh.”

They’re both silent, but this time, Phil can feel there’s some shift in the air. It’s less stuffy and intimidating now.

“Well, I mean it’s too bad that you get a guy who’s too much of a twat to realize what he’s missing, because you’re really cute.”

The reddish tint on Dan’s cheeks becomes flaming blush at that.

“Not that that’s all there’s to you. I’m sure you’re a wonderful and intelligent person. Though you are kind of untouchable sometimes.”

Dan’s head lowers, almost like he’s ashamed of himself. Maybe he is. “Sorry about that. I know it’s not excused, but between my ex, and school, and everything, it just comes out as me being a dick. Especially to people I don’t know well, or even, you know, strangers. Because I’m really socially inept. So, on top of being pissed, I don’t know how to deal with people.”

Well, that makes sense Phil guesses. Having a stressful relationship and difficult academic life can hinder a person’s growth, making them not the best person they can be. At least, Phil now knows his neighbor is not really a truly evil person. Well, he hopes this guy won’t be anymore after this. It’ll be really shitty if he gets his hopes up now and tomorrow he’s greeted with yet another Alaska-ish treatment.

From the outside, he hears some pacing that gets louder and louder until it stops in front of his front door. Both heads turn towards it. Then there’s a relatively hard knocking. “Oi, Lester!” their long awaited locksmith says loudly.

“Calm down, Lewis! God, people are sleeping!” Phil hisses while opening the door. He is met with the scowling face of a bald and disheveled man in his forties.

“Shut up, Lester. I was sleeping too. Now where’s the brat’s door? I wanna go home and sleep.” The man grumbles.

“All right, all right. It’s that one. On my left. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Don’t know, haven’t seen it. Can be minutes, can be hours.”

Phil looks inside and finds that Dan has curled up into himself, seeming impossibly vulnerable and distraught. He just has to distract him, then.

“Okay, then. Is it okay if we just wait here? I can make some coffee, though, if you want.”

“Yeah, that’ll be real nice.”

Then Lewis walks to Dan’s door and puts down his tool box near it. Phil hovers over his own door for a few seconds before closing it, leaving it slightly ajar, and walks back inside to make Lewis his promised coffee. He can feel eyes on the back of his head, tracking his movement while he moves about his kitchen. He decides not to say anything.

When he’s done making the coffee, he takes it outside. He still can feel Dan watching him, so he quickly walks outside to deliver Lewis’ coffee. When he nears the man, the locksmith is already in deep concentration, looking at the lock as if it were a diamond. It’s a locksmith’s thing, he guesses. He trots back to his own place after putting the coffee mug down. Unlike before, though, the twenty-one year old on his sofa seems to be avoiding his gaze now. He plops down beside him anyway.

“Do you want to watch it with me?” Phil offers. If Phil’s people reading ability is as good as he thought, then the younger guy would like to watch it according to the stare at his screen. It will be a good distraction.

“I’ve watched it before, but yeah, it’ll be nice to watch it again.”

So they do. For a good half an hour they watch the film with each wearing one earbud. Somewhere along the line, Dan slouches down a bit under Phil’s blue and green blanket until his head touches Phil’s shoulder faintly. He doesn’t seem to realize it, so Phil doesn’t point it out.

Finally, there’s another series of knocking few minutes later. They both straighten up and plug out the earbuds. “Well, seems like you can start your studying now” Phil says. Dan gives another small smile which he’s sure he’s never getting tired of. He realizes he wants to do everything it takes to keep it there on his adorable face.

Shit. He’s not crushing on a guy who just got dumped and had a mental breakdown an hour ago. Hell no.

Phil averts his gaze and goes to open his door again with Dan trailing behind him. On the other side, Lewis is standing and yawning really wide. Phil cringes mentally.

“So it’s done?” Phil hears from beside him.

Both Phil and Lewis stare at him as if they’re surprised he talks at all. “Uh, yeah. Just a bit stuck ‘cause some rough handling. Got it pretty shaken, but I changed it, so it’s all good and dandy now. Here’s the key.”

At that, Dan receives the keys and frowns a bit. Phil know what the middle aged man is talking about. He could hear door-slamming at nights, some of which have taken him by surprise and gotten him jumping because they were loud or out of the blue.

“Okay. So, um, how much?”

“£90.” Lewis answers. When Dan opens his mouth and Phil furrows his eyebrows, Lewis quickly says, “No negotiation. It’s bloody well after 6 PM, so it’s £70 per hour. It’s by MLA*, lads.”

Dan fishes a fifty note and four tenners from his wallet to give without further complaint. The man just takes them and hastily thanks both of them for the coffee before walking off. The awkwardness suddenly comes back at full force and Phil doesn’t know what to do, though it’s a great comfort knowing that the other seems to be on the same boat.

“Well, I guess I should go back.”

They still stand at the same spot, though.

“Yeah, okay.”

Dan fidgets a bit before looking at the sofa where his backpack is sitting. “I’ll just, um, go get my stuff, and uh, I’ll be gone.” Phil nods at that.

The brunette finally moves, walking languidly towards the center of the living room where the furniture is located. He picks up his bag and slings it on his shoulder. He lets his eyes wander around Phil’s open plan apartment before letting out a deep breath and walking to the front door.

“So, thanks for everything. You know, helping me through my mental breakdown, calling the locksmith, making me a coffee and a tea –which I didn’t drink, and it’s cold now, sorry about that– and you know, just generally being a really good neighbor,” the brunette says quietly with a ghost of smile, “even though I’m a dick neighbor. I’m really sorry about that.”

Phil smiles back, belatedly and regretfully realizing that, damn, that’s one addictive smile there that the younger boy has. He wonders if he can get him to do a wider and more liberated one. He has a lot of days to attempt that, and he will. That kind of smile must be really beautiful on Dan.

“It’s all right, just make sure you know you can just knock at my door and have another tearful session of venting instead if you ever feel like being an Evil Elsa again.” He chuckles.

“Evil Elsa, huh? I think I like that. Has a nice ring to it.”

“You can thank Evelyn, then. She came up with that nickname for you.” At Dan’s puzzled expression, he adds, “The woman who lives on my right? The one with fancy dresses and gleaming platinum hair? That one, she’s Evelyn.”

“I thought she’s called Lily.”

“Well, it kind of sounds similar.”

Another moment passes with them just looking at each other, quiet and calmly assessing one another. Phil suddenly has an overwhelming urge to hug Dan, or kiss him or something. God, Dan better goes away before he does something embarrassing.

“Well, thanks…Finn.”

Wait, what?

Then it dawns on his mind. Oh yeah, it does sound similar to his name, so he gently says, “Uh, my name is Phil, actually.”

Dan’s eyes comically widen and he bury his face on his palms. “Shit! Oh my god, that’s fucking embarrassing.” He groans loudly. He makes some sobbing-like sound while he is at it. Phil just laughs a little and slowly pries Dan’s hands away from his face. His entire face and ears are all burning and red.

“Hey, it’s fine. At least you get half of my name right. I mean, it does starts with F sound.”

“Don’t–oh my god, don’t. I’m really humiliated right now.” Despite this, Dan’s lip corner is tilted up a bit and Phil is washed over by another warm feeling.

“Anyway, you know the guy across me is called Rob, right?”

Phil can see the telltale sign of another bout of embarrassment on Dan’s face. “Don’t tell me you got it wrong, too.”

“Shut up. I thought it was Ron.”

Phil just loses it at that. He laughs so hard until his stomach hurts, forcing him to double over and clutch his middle. He felt a gentle hit on his shoulder, so he straightens up and tries to stop giggling. It’s futile, but at least he’s not hollering like a troll anymore. He then wipes the tear on the corner of his eyes.

“It’s okay Dan. I mean Finn to Phil and Ron to Rob are still much better than Evil Elsa to Dan. At least you put effort into getting our names.” He genuinely says noticing the small fall on Dan’s face. “Seriously. It’s fine.”

“But you all hate me.”

Well, Phil can’t dispute that. But it’s probably not a good idea to say it out loud when there’s a chance of Dan being a little friendly and social. Maybe he’ll only be dubbed Elsa later.

“No, we don’t. We’re just a little bit confused about what to do with your cold exterior.”

Phil is, partly. He doesn’t know about the rest of his neighbors, though. He hopes they share the same sentiment.

“Well, uh, I really need to get going. So, um.”

“Yeah, yeah, you should start your study.”

“Okay, then. Good night, Phil.” With that, Dan walks away to his own apartment.

Phil does the same and fishes out his keys inside his pocket. When he reaches his door, he hesitates. His hand which is holding his key in front of the lock is hovering in the air. He looks at his neighbor again.

“Hey, Dan. Want me to accompany you studying? I can help with the memorizing.”

Phil doesn’t know why, but his heart is suddenly beating so fast waiting for the answer. It’s supposed to be a casual offer. It’s nothing if Dan says no. Why is he suddenly nervous?

He doesn’t care about that in the end because Dan gives him another one of his really, really cute hesitant but sweet smile and a soft “yes”.

Later in the dawn, after a long series of Studio Ghibli films discussions, gushings about surprisingly many similar bands of their favorite, and some half-hearted reminders of studying for Dan’s exam interjected here and there, Phil tucks the sleeping brunette in on the sofa bed with black and grey duvets and slips under it himself. He looks at the youth face of his once believed eternally frowning neighbor before closing his eyes, and he decides that yeah, he’d really love to see more of that smiles in the morning and after.

**Author's Note:**

> *MLA : Master Locksmiths Association – this is the authoritative body approved by the Home Office that checks companies and independent contractors’ standards of work against the national average.


End file.
